


Somehow

by Viridian5



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Drama, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-29
Updated: 2004-02-29
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:55:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I get this way / When I try to get over you..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somehow

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "Duane Barry."
> 
> Inspired by Stabbing Westward's "Sometimes It Hurts," which sounds like how you'd feel in the middle of a bad drunk. Thanks to the LiveJournal readers who urged me to release this for real when I posted it on my LJ for Coming Out of the WIP Closet Day.

I stumbled into a wall again. This time I just stayed there and waited for the world to stop spinning. Okay, slow down in its spinning. I didn't think it would ever stop, and certainly not for me.

My head pounded like the surf on the beach, with swirling debris included. Ditto with my stomach lurching. If I could just vomit and get the poison out, I would be fine, I knew it, but I couldn't, and I refused to induce it. I had a taste in my mouth even I couldn't describe. I wanted to crawl into a hole, curl into fetal position, and die.

But this was good; it helped me remember why I didn't go out drinking more often.

I hadn't accomplished what I set out to do anyway. Alex Krycek wouldn't stop haunting me. I still felt him standing behind me, leering over my shoulder. At the bottom of every glass, I saw wicked dark eyes mocking me. I could still feel his touch...

Damn you, Alex. Why did you have to make me care, then betray me, strike at Scully, and leave?

The worst betrayal was mine. Scully's absence and the not knowing what happened to her gnawed at me like a rotten tooth, but at night I couldn't stop thinking this way of the man who helped it occur. I didn't know where they took her or if she was still alive--although I prayed, yeah, prayed, that she lived--but at my lowest, and it was truly my lowest, I couldn't get _him_ out of my mind.

All of it, my fault. It was always my fault.

Scully's missing, maybe in pain, maybe dead, but I couldn't stop thinking about me. What a stupid, selfish bastard I could be.

I knew where I was. I had long gone past drunkenness into the kind of despairing sobriety that makes suicide look like a logical choice. But I was used to the feeling if not the drinking.

As I turned the corner, I saw a lone young woman singing and dancing. With her shirt wide open and no bra, flashing the world and not caring. I wasn't the only one with problems. I wondered what she was on. She could need help. Such obvious weakness always drew predators.

She was singing....

I tried to touch her, to close up her shirt, to calm her down, but she fought me off. I tried to talk to her but maybe the headphones she wouldn't let me remove from her ears won't let her hear me.

I couldn't leave her like this, so I sat down to keep watch as she kept singing and dancing. None of it seemed real. All of her lyrics were about need and pain, and for some reason they made me feel a little better. I always had been twisted.

When the memories came, as they always did, now I could look at them a little differently. At least for tonight.

Eventually a bus pulled up to the curb, which surprised the hell out of me since we weren't at a bus stop. The driver looked concerned as he opened the door and told us to come in.

That seemed to break through to her a bit, since she got on. I followed. She rummaged through her purse, but it was obvious that someone had cleaned her out. She only had lint and a compact. I handed her a token.

As she walked past me, I noticed that she didn't have a CD in her Discman.

When I tried to follow her, she pushed me away and almost knocked me down the steps. She didn't want me around. Usually that would bother me, but right now it just seemed funny.

The bus driver had to be a better guardian than I was, and there were other people on the bus to keep him honest. I told him to drop her off at a hospital or police precinct. She needed help. He promised he would.

So I walked. Somehow I made it home, though I couldn't remember how.

And somehow I slept without dreaming.

 

### End


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